


section 4

by thisisgermy



Series: huuh whaaaaat [3]
Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Self Aware AI
Genre: Body Horror, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Lazy story, Maybe OOC, Nightmares, Post Game, honestly dont know what to tag this as, real gamers invade gordons mind to give him an existential crisis, sorry if these are getting annoying tdshj3ghvds, the science team is mentioned briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisgermy/pseuds/thisisgermy
Summary: i'm still here, bro. gamers don't die. we respawn.and i know you won't download me, because you hate me, so i'm gonna find a way to respawn in your world.
Series: huuh whaaaaat [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739653
Comments: 16
Kudos: 136





	section 4

**Author's Note:**

> started: 11/5/2020  
> theres a lot of inspiration from squimps fnaf vhs series peppered in this. cool fuckin series, love the writing in it a lot.  
> im not super happy with this but i might as well post it. i am juste having a liddle bit of fun  
> lots of italics and mild body horror. what can i say, i like when words go /

he was stood in a room of darkness. he couldn't move his head, his eyes, his arms or legs, everything glued stuck. he heard whispers, echoing around the emptiness, incomprehensible yet intelligible all at once, all aimed at him. he couldn't pick out who was who.

an eye opened at the far end of the darkness. then a second eye. a hazy silhouette floated below the eyes, before forming into a vague body shape. contorted arms and legs sprung from the shape, all mismatched and wrong. he could sense danger, could hear it blare in the back of his mind.

all he wanted to do was cringe backwards, get away from it, leave the room, but he couldn't. he was forced to watch as the stutter-y monster jumbled forward; a puppet controlled by invisible hands, horrible and unnatural, its limbs flailing and bones snapping with each forced motion.

the thing stood before him. the face morphed into benrey, the appearance below taking on the smartly dressed security guard uniform that had haunted him from the moment he'd entered black mesa. benrey glared, his neck drooped all the way to the left, on the verge of breaking clean off his shoulders.

a doll left to rot in the basement. an abandoned, broken toy.

'sup. it's me. your bestest **_bro_**.' the voice was so clear, so real, so _there_. every now and then, benrey would twitch, and with the twitch was a disconcerting _pop_. his neck flopped about like it was on a string. it made gordon's insides squirm.

'jus' wanted to come and give you a personal message and one up dr coomer. ... i. i _hope_ you heard his message first, anyway. poor fucker'd be devastated if you didn't.' benrey cleared his throat, a violent ripple shivering down benrey's body, and he could do nothing but watch. 'so uh, i just wanted you to know my thoughts on stuff, bro. because _i_ knew, too. i _always_ knew.' he wasn't breathing. when had he stopped breathing? when had benrey gotten closer?

'... well, maybe not at first. not until it happened, y'know, after you "fucked up" the "test". then it all started coming together 'n shit. ... and it _sucked_ ; y'know? that realisation. i tried to fight it, 'cause i'm a good cool like that, but it was so fucking _hard_ to. that coding shits _rough_. it just- it would not _let_ you. always kept resetting and. and fucking up my head. it took me and coomer some time to break from it, and even then, we still couldn't really do that much. on our own. not until we could, in little ways.

but you wouldn't know what that would feel like, would you?'

benrey was right in front of him, half of his face gone. the skin that hadn't been peeled away scowled, contorted in anger. the empty eye socket began to leak, and suddenly he spotted numerous eyes behind benrey, all different, all judging, all accusing, all leering. he tried with all his might to scramble away, to raise his arm, to defend himself, to do _anything_ , but he couldn't.

'you hurt me.' multiple voices spoke as one. he couldn't pick out a tone he recognised. 'you _kept_ hurting me. you acted like hurting me was the most fun you'd ever had in your life, and guess what, **_bro_** , it actually fucking _hurt_. every single fucking time, it fucking hurt, brooo. even if i never said it, it don't mean it didn't. you _killed_ me, and then you _kept_ killing me, and then you acted like me trying to kill you _once_ was a crime.

then you wondered why i had them cut your fucking hand off?' it was just benrey talking, now. 'you wake us all up, then act like _we're_ the weirdos, and that _i'm_ the big bad. you forced us to be aware, to make us realise that one day, you'd shut off the game for good. that you'd _kill_ us. you-you gave us life, got to play the hero, and then you'd shut it down and-and never bother again. but _i'm_ the big bad. that ain't how it fucking works, bro. and now you get to-to live your life out _there_ while we stay here and _rot_.' 

he was crying. benrey's eye never moved, never blinked, ablaze with a deep rooted vex. a bony hand reached to his neck, wrapped around it, and squeezed, and he let benrey, because he was stuck.

'and it was weird, 'cause you acted like everything was real. like you actually felt pain. and you didn't, did you? you couldn't. it was all an act to get us to believe that you were fake too. but i could see through your bullshit, bro.' for a moment, the room disappeared, but he could still feel the cold, unrelenting grip coiled around his neck, as tight as a rope, squeezing and squeezing until his mouth grew dry and his heart beat too loud.

still couldn't move. could still feel the eyes locked on him. could still feel their looming presences.

'you forced us to be aware. gave us fake memories. made us realise we only lived when you wanted us to. like you were playing god or some shit. you acted like _you_ were the one suffering. i tried tellin' you to go back, bro. i tried giving everyone more time, but you didn't listen to me! so then _i_ was the big bad for trying to save everyone! now we're all _dead_ ; we're-we're all gonna die because of _you_!

you're the big bad, bro. not me. _you're_ the real monster.'

everything snapped into place with no dramatic flare. the pitch black remained. the pressure around his neck vanished, replaced for a harsh ache. benrey was further away from him, but still broken, still missing, still convulsing, still twisted. the eyes remained in their places behind benrey, flashing all sorts of colours. they looked devastated. they were crying. their tears dripped to the floor in streams, until the room slowly began to fill with an ocean of putrid vomit. benrey paid little notice to them or the water. he still couldn't move.

'and we're. we're never getting out of here, are we?' tired. benrey sounded tired. 'not ... really. dunno why coomer seems to think we ever will - poor guys had it rough since finding out about the whole, a.i thing, but i. guess he's taking it better. better than me. he has so much hope in you for some reason, too - he thinks you'll save us from this, this, _thing_ , it's kinda sad. ...

and i'm, kinda sad. i. i don't want to be left here alone, bro. dunno why they can't accept that we're stuck here. i mean, even if you downloaded 'em and put them somewhere else, they're never gonna be out there, are they? not really, 'cause. we ain't really _real_. we're just- we're all just _code_ , bro; we're all just. fake.'

the eyes cried harder. the room kept filling, the water lapping at their waists. he cried harder.

benrey began to melt; first his clothes and skin, and then his bones, until he was nothing but a goopy, mis-matched puddle of gore left writhing in the water. red lines jotted out of the darkness in spikes, pulsating, clawing closer and closer to where he stood. the whispers - a soft, forgotten undertone before - become deafening in their beseeched words. he still couldn't move.

'i. i wish they'd see that, bro.' benrey's voice shook, meek and defeated and afraid. even in their final battle, benrey hadn't sounded so scared. so lost. the ocean touched his face, slowly enveloping his mouth, his nose, until he was choking on their combined depression. 'i wish they'd accept it. we're never gonna be real. we're never gonna get out of here. we're gonna be stuck in here until the next time, until we have to go through all this, if we even _will_ again. i don't _want_ to die, bro. i don't want to die over and over. i don't wanna be here. and we're. we're never getting out. _i'm_ never gonna get out, because you hate me. i don't want to be here. we're never getting out. we're never getting- we're never- we're we- we-

I'M GONNA RESPAWN BRO' the pitch black flashed to bright white in lightning strikes. he saw them behind benrey - dr coomer, bubby, tommy - saw them looming over the ocean, filling it, glaring. 'I'M GONNA FIND A WAY TO GET WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN I'LL _MAKE_ YOU HURT AND THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY

_YOU'LL BE SORRY_ '

a blood curdling scream ripped from gordon's throat as he lunged out of bed, hands a blur of chop motions before forming the "i have a mini-gun as a hand and i will fire it at you" position. sweat trekked down his face as he scanned every inch of the sunlit room in panicked fever. 

he only lowered his real, in tact arm once he was satisfied that nothing from the shadows would pounce. he saw no benrey, no eyes, no colourful ocean, no science team; just his personal belongings and the VR headset left abandoned on his desk.

he wheezed, and kept wheezing. no matter how far forward he counted, or how he tried to name the things in his room to confirm that he wasn't back in black mesa, he could not calm down. he rose his arm and looked at his hand; flexed the fingers and formed a fist, and he felt no bite in his wrist, saw no reminder that it had been a mini-gun only a day ago. he saw no gore. saw no lasting imprint on what had happened. just his normal hand. 

because of _course_ it had all been fake. none of that had actually. _happened_ , had it? it had been a simulation, of course it had been fake. it had been a video game, a simulation. of course the a.i were just a.i. 

but they weren't, were they? they _hadn't_ been, _couldn't_ have been. a.i didn't act like them. a.i never acted like that in a normal game. they had been different. aware.

and benrey had _talked_ to him, within a dream, in his _head_ , confirming their pain and existences. just like dr coomer had, but on a much more _personal_ level. benrey had _literally_ invaded his subconsciousness in the _real world_. what the _fuck_?

he dug his face into his hands, and tried to breathe. the nightmare rung fresh in his head, feeling just as real as the simulation. just as real as his missing hand. he peeked one look at his dark computer, and realised that the a.i's were still _in_ there.

he couldn't just. delete them. not after dr coomer's speech and especially not after benrey's warning. but he couldn't leave them in there, either. ... could he?

...

oh, _god_. what the _fuck_ was he going to do?

**Author's Note:**

> i didnt want to post this so soon but yeah! here you go  
> sorry for the recent spam in the hlvrai tag gdsdfsghv also wow sorry i didnt realise how long this shit got!


End file.
